Ixopo is a town situated on a tributary of the
Mkhomazi River
The Umkhomazi River is a river in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Course
It rises in some of the highest eastwards-facing slopes of the Drakensberg mountains, near the mighty Thabana Ntlenyana. The river flows southeastwards towards the Indian Oce ...
along the
R56 highway in the midlands of
KwaZulu-Natal
KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN and known as "the garden province") is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province were merged. It is locate ...
,
South Africa.
Background
Ixopo was formerly known as Stuartstown, was laid out in 1878 and named after M Stuart, Resident Magistrate of the Ixopo district, who was killed at the
Battle of Ingogo in 1881.
[ Its name is derived from the Zulu ]onomatopoeic
Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...
word, ''eXobo'', describing the sound made as cattle squelch through mud.lateral click
The lateral clicks are a family of click consonants found only in African languages. The clicking sound used by equestrians to urge on their horses is a lateral click, although it is not a speech sound in that context. Lateral clicks are found t ...
).
Ixopo is most famously described by Alan Paton
Alan Stewart Paton (11 January 1903 – 12 April 1988) was a South African writer and anti-apartheid activist. His works include the novels ''Cry, the Beloved Country'' and '' Too Late the Phalarope''.
Family
Paton was born in Pietermaritzbu ...
in the opening lines of Cry, The Beloved Country: "There is a lovely road which runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it."[
Until the mid-1980s, Ixopo was served by a railway station on the narrow gauge ]Umzinto - Donnybrook narrow gauge railway
Umzinto is a town, located in the South Coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and falls under the uMdoni Local Municipality. It was a sugarcane growing area and the town was set up as the centre for a sugar mill.
Etymology
"Umzinto" is said to ...
.[
]
Notable people
* Thabo Nodada
Thabo Nodada (born 2 May 1995 in Ixopo, Kwa-Zulu Natal) is a South African soccer player who plays as a midfielder for Cape Town City and the South Africa national team.
Club career
He joined Cape Town City in 2016 when they purchased the PSL ...
(Footballer)
* Purity Nomthandazo Malinga
Purity Nomthandazo Malinga (born 1958) is a South African Methodist bishop and the 100th Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA). Malinga was ordained to the Christian ministry in 1988, the fourth woman to be ordain ...
(Bishop)
* Ray Zondo (Chief Justice, Constitutional Court of South Africa
The Constitutional Court of South Africa is a supreme court, supreme constitutional court established by the Constitution of South Africa, and is the apex court in the South African judicial system, with general jurisdiction.
The Court was fi ...
)
References
3
R56 information
Route 56 - Ixopo
Populated places in the Ubuhlebezwe Local Municipality
{{KwaZuluNatal-geo-stub